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Crowdfunding campaign for Oshawa twins raises more than $18,000

Though Neocate, the special infant formula their twins must have, is still not covered by insurance, donations are helping out — including $10,000 from a local car dealership’s owner.

Jamie Barrette and Trevor Grant, seen with twins Grayson and Shaylyn in a June 16 photo, have been helped by a crowdfunding campaign that has raised more than $18,000 for the expensive formula they need to cope with a rare disorder. (Jason Liebregts / Metroland)

After the Toronto Star and other media reported on the difficulties facing an Oshawa couple struggling to pay for infant formula their twins need to eat, a crowdfunding campaign has raised more than $18,000 to help them.

Trevor Grant and Jamie Barrette had twins early this year, but they were born with a birth defect common in premature babies. Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) prevented the twins (their fourth and fifth children) from digesting regular food.

Eventually, doctors prescribed a special, amino-acid based formula called Neocate, which allow the babies to digest the nutrients they need without risking damage to their digestive systems.

However, Neocate is very expensive (Barrette estimates they currently spend about $80 per day on the formula) and is not covered by many insurance plans, including theirs.

This is because the formula is considered a nutritional supplement, not medicine, and lacks a Drug Identification Number. While some plans will cover it through a special discretionary fund, Barrette and Grant cannot expense the formula to their insurer, Sun Life.

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Despite multiple pleas for an exception, Barrette says the insurance company has not budged, and there has so far been no word from Grant’s employer, through which they are insured.

But thanks to substantial help from the community, including the crowdfunding success, Barrette says her faith in humanity has been restored.

“It’s been amazing. The people that have just reached out to us are amazing. We would be completely lost without them,” she said.

“And it’s complete strangers and just sweet, and the things they do for people they don’t even know, it warms your heart.”

On top of the crowdfunding, a local Shopper’s Drug Mart has been helping out the couple by providing the formula at cost and giving the couple Optimum points for every “like” on a Facebook photo of the twins. Many people have also been sending them actual cans of the formula.

But the largest donation so far came from Jason Craine, the president of Mills Motors Buick GMC, a car dealership in Oshawa, who donated $10,000 to the crowdfunding campaign on behalf of his company and its employees.

Craine made the donation in an attempt to encourage his employees to continue to be active in the community — the dealership runs a program called Mills Act of Kindness or MAK-tivism, which occasionally pays employees to volunteer rather than work.

After receiving the donation, Grant and Barrette took the twins and their other daughter into the sales office to meet Craine and some of the other employees.

“Meeting the twins (Monday) really brought it home for the organization,” Craine said. “To kind of hold them and cuddle them, really humanized what was otherwise just another social media story.”

Although the money raised so far will not cover all the costs of Neocate — which the twins will probably have to continue eating for at least their first year, Barrette said the generosity of the community exceeded all her expectations.

“It’s just people like that, that really just hits home,” she said. “And it’s so nice to know that people care.”

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